And That Happened

Twins 8, White Sox 5: Juggernaut. Five wins in a row for the Twins and their 11th in 12 games after making short work of the White Sox. Minnesota is 42-16 since the All-Star break. Mark Buehrle after the game: “Obviously they came in and kicked our butt every which way.”

Cardinals 4, Padres 0: There go the Cards, beating a good team again after dropping a bunch of games to bad ones. I can’t remember a team this schizo. This loss, plus the Giants win, drops the Padres behind the Giants in the NL West by a half game. They, San Francisco and Atlanta are all tied up in the loss column, however, so the wild card is a giant cluster right now.

Giants 10, Dodgers 2: This is the win I was talking about. And get this: runs! The Giants hadn’t had a ton of these in recent games. Jonathan Sanchez struck out 12. Ted Lilly had his shortest start of the season, giving up two homers and lasting only three and a third. He is 0-3 in his last four starts and has allowed 19 earned runs and seven HRs over that time.

Diamondbacks 3, Reds 1: A getaway day loss for the Reds, combined with the Cardinals win, drops their lead to seven. The game story is full of Reds players talking about how they don’t need to worry about St. Louis much anymore, don’t need to watch the scoreboard, etc. I guess that’s probably true—the Cardinals don’t seem like a threat—but it seems a few games too early for that kind of talk to me.

Mets 6, Pirates 2: Mike Pelfrey picks up his 15th win. The Mets sweep Pittsburgh. It was their first four-game sweep of any team in over four years, which is rather amazing to me.

Indians 3, Angels 2: A Shelley Duncan roller slipped out of Alberto Callaspo’s hands in the bottom of the 11th, allowing him to reach and allowing Trevor Crowe to score from third. Walkoff error, baby.